


Time to Float

by royalchttphn



Series: Inktober 2019 Prompts - Reddie [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Deadlights (IT), Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 12:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20873861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalchttphn/pseuds/royalchttphn
Summary: Richie was floating - that much he knew.Inktober 2019 Day 2: Mindless





	Time to Float

Richie was floating - that much he knew.

In a literal sense, he was feet off the ground, legs crooked inward and dangling, mouth open, blood trickling up from his nose in an uneasy defiance of gravity.

In a more real sense (a more terrifying sense), _he_ was floating. Everything that made Richie _Richie_, his mind, his soul, detached from his body and being pulled towards the deadlights, swirling and whooshing and showing Richie every horror imaginable.

_Eddie_, he thought absently, and then, _Oh. I’m in the deadlights_. Almost as if on queue, he felt a pull deep in his core, _deeper_ than his core, and he knew the deadlights were coming for him.

*****

Eddie was mindless with fear. Seeing Richie caught in the deadlights brought on a terror much more intense than he thought he could have ever felt. More intense than when Mike called him back to Derry, more intense than the shitshow over fortune cookies at Jade of the Orient, more intense than getting stabbed in the cheek by a psychopath.

This feeling came with losing someone you loved; someone you still love.

Apparently seeing Richie floating like a man-sized helium balloon was an appropriate time for Eddie to come to terms with being deeply, madly in love with his childhood best friend.

And he knew Richie wasn’t gone - Eddie would know it if he was. He would _feel_ it. Eddie hadn’t lost Richie - not yet, and not for the rest of his godforsaken life if he could help it - and it was with this knowledge that he grasped the rusty spike Bev had handed him (_it kills monsters_), cocked his arm back (_does it?_), and with a fierceness and accuracy he didn’t know he possessed (_if you believe it does_), threw the spike deep into Pennywise’s throat.

“_Beep beep, motherfucker!_”

Whatever hold Pennywise had on Richie was severed as It tumbled backwards, impaling Itself on one of the spikes making up the stupid circle where the Ritual of Chud had failed. Richie, no longer being levitated by a supernatural demonic clown’s gaze, dropped the twenty-some odd feet from his place in the air onto the unforgiving stone that made up the cave floor. 

_I did it_, Eddie thought, his heart racing. _I did it I killed him we won we_\--

The smack-crunch sound that Richie’s body made as it collapsed was enough to shake Eddie into action.

“Richie!” He cried, racing down from his perch. He picked quickly through the rubble, tripping every few steps, intent on reaching the man lying motionless on the ground. “Richie, I did it! I think I killed him! Oh my god, I think I did it!”

Richie didn’t respond. His eyes were still rolled back to their whites. He was still stuck in the deadlights.

So Eddie did the only thing he knew would work: he kissed Richie.

He poured everything he felt against Richie’s unresponsive lips and wondered if this is what Ben had felt when he kissed Beverly three decades ago, if this magical true love’s kiss thing would work this time, if he was wrong and Richie really _was_ gone - when Richie’s arms suddenly came flying up to wrap around his back, scrabbling for purchase in the fabric of his jacket.

One second, Eddie was kissing the catatonic love of his life; the next, Richie was hurling the pair away in a roll that sent sharp stones clawing into where Eddie’s back scraped across the cave floor.

“You’re not dying,” Richie breathed, eyes boring intensely into Eddie’s. “Not today; not on my watch.”

Eddie wasn’t sure what Richie was talking about, but he shoved that away to favor the moment. Richie’s chest was pressed tight to Eddie’s, his face mere inches away, and Eddie felt, not for the first time since he returned to Derry, that he might cry. This would be a good cry, though. This cry would be cathartic as fuck and so wholly ethereal because Richie was alive, Eddie was alive, Bev and Ben and Bill and Mike--

The tears could come later, Eddie decided as Richie pulled him up by his hand and towards the other Losers.

For now, they had to kill the fucking clown.


End file.
